A copyright question

[alfstone]

Thanks all for your answers.

My question came from the consideration that when signing in many web sites where is possible to post music, quite often there's an advice not to post covers, unless you have the permission by the owner of the copyright and so on. I know also about some guys whose MySpace account was cancelled after they had post some covers.

By this point of view, I've found the considerations by T.C. Elliott very interesting and useful to understand better the terms of the matter.

The thread, as often happens, has switched to a different matter, the use of backing tracks. I can only say that the only time when I've used  a backing track was the last one, with Watermelon in Easter Hay. I needed  a drums backing track, since it wasn't possible (to me) create a decent 9/4 drum track, so I found a midi file of the song, and then re-arranged the drum part of it. But apart from that, I find so much funny creating the backing tracks from scratch, and for this I use Band-in-a-Box, expecially with the new realtracks feature. And in this case, as in loops too, it's clearly specified that everything is royalty-free.

Alfredo

[T.C. Elliott]

Re: Where to get backing tracks.
The unofficial fender forum has users that create backing tracks for people to play over. The idea being that you solo over them more than really write a song to them. A lot of them are obvious rip offs of recorded songs... 'Born Under a Bad Sign' by Albert King etc.
That being said I know Kevin (a friend original met on the fender forum) uses the backers to create new songs, lyric and all. He asks the posters permission to do so and they share in ownership.

I've similar backing tracks on this site but I am so focused on doing the song a week that I seldom go into the covers section *shame on me* unless it's a fest. I really like the idea of a backing track that several of us use to create an original song. I know it's been done here with some great results.

Similarly in FAWM and on 50/90 we've had an unofficial challenge where one person (or a couple of people) post a complete lyric with chords for each line. Then anyone who wants to records their song using that lyric and those chords. It's amazing how different each version is. My song Black Month Where is an example and I'm pretty proud of it.